Austin Russell, the billionaire founder of Luminar, has made a bid to acquire the lidar maker five months after he was replaced as CEO following an ethics inquiry. The takeover effort was disclosed in an SEC filing by Russell early Friday morning. It would involve his new company, Russell AI Labs, purchasing 100% of the…
Apple announced on Friday that it has secured exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights to Formula 1. The new five-year agreement between the tech giant and Formula 1 will make Apple TV the exclusive streaming home for all Formula 1 races starting in the 2026 season, taking over from current broadcaster ESPN. All practice, qualifying, Sprint sessions,…
WhatsApp is attempting to solve its spam problem by curbing how many messages individual users and businesses can send to unknown people without getting a response. While the app started as an easy way to send messages to personal contacts, over time, it has become more complex with groups, communities, and business messaging. With those…
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Automaker Stellantis and Chinese autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai have signed a nonbinding agreement to build robotaxis for deployment in Europe. The collaboration will integrate Pony’s self-driving software into Stellantis’ electric medium-size van platform, which is built with advanced sensors to support autonomous vehicles. The companies plan to first deploy test vehicles based on the…
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Silicon Valley leaders including White House AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks and OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon caused a stir online this week for their comments about groups promoting AI safety. In separate instances, they alleged that certain advocates of AI safety are not as virtuous as they appear, and are either acting…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…
Silicon Valley’s rule? It’s not cool to be cautious. As OpenAI removes guardrails and VCs criticize companies like Anthropic for supporting AI safety regulations, it’s becoming clearer who the industry thinks should shape AI development. On this episode of Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Max Zeff discuss how the line between innovation and responsibility…
Senate Republicans shared a deepfake video of Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, designed to make it seem like Democrats are celebrating the ongoing government shutdown, which has lasted 16 days. In the deepfake, an AI-generated Schumer repeats the phrase “every day gets better for us,” an actual quote taken out of context from…
